


Forget Me Not

by gimmeallyourchange



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Angst, Consensual Underage Sex, Drinking, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Existentialism, Gaslighting, Incest, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Physical Abuse, Porn With Plot, Triggers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22156453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gimmeallyourchange/pseuds/gimmeallyourchange
Summary: When Morty wakes up in a stranger's backseat, flying a million miles through space in what he hopes is a dream, he's almost sure that he's going to die. When his assailant reveals himself to be someone familiar, however, urging Morty to believe that they had once lived an excitingly dangerous life that he now has no recollection of, he's forced to reevaluate what it really means to be human in a world where his entire life has been mapped out by a set of rules that no longer apply to him.
Relationships: Rick Sanchez/Morty Smith
Comments: 17
Kudos: 59





	Forget Me Not

Morty woke with a start, heart frantic and cheeks flushed. As he opened his eyes he knew that he must be in another dream, somewhere sailing amongst the stars that hung in the inky black night like beacons across the ocean. It was a confusing mixture of stunning and terrifying, but as he was trying to work out his feelings on the scenery, a gruff voice came from somewhere in front of him, cold and unfamiliar.

“You’re finally awake. That’s good.”

“I-I...” Morty stammered, trying to make sense of it all. It felt like there was some kind of fog over his brain.

“It’s okay, kid. I know you probably don’t remember me, or, y’know, any of this, but I promise I’m gonna figure all of that out, okay?”

“What a-are you talking about? Who are you?” Morty demanded, finally able to form a proper thought. Too many things were going on all around him, the environment, the man, the vehicle they were driving...something definitely wasn’t right. The sensory overload was starting to make his head hurt.

The man clucked his tongue a couple of times and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. From Morty’s position across the backseat he couldn’t get a good look at his face. He figured it was reasonable to assume by this point that he had been kidnapped. Just how the fuck was someone like him going to get out of a situation like this? He had no wit, no physical prowess or brevity. He wasn’t even that loud of a screamer. Jesus. Did anyone even notice that he was missing? Too many “what ifs” hung in the air, and the weight of it caused Morty to start hyperventilating.

“Hey! Damn, Morty, calm down! There’s not even a-a-a place for me to pull over. Take a deep breath. Does that still work for you? F-Fuck’s sake, it’s been too long, h-how the fuck am I supposed to remember what to do?” The man ranted, throwing his hands in the air. “So glad to see that your situation has improved since all of this stupid shit, fuck.” He took a deep breath and checked back on Morty, but he was too wracked with fear and anxieties to focus on the stranger’s identity. “Ship, switch to autopilot.”

“Turning auto-pilot on,” came a robotic voice from the ceiling. Morty felt like he was drowning, choking on air, gasping for it like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the atmosphere to fill his lungs.

The man climbed into the backseat with Morty and propped him up into a sitting position, rubbing rough circles into his back as he wheezed desperately, watching with a numb sort of detachment as tears slipped down his face and hit the floor beneath him. There wasn’t even enough energy in his body for him to push his assailant away. He was too pathetic, helpless like a child. He was definitely going to die. The thought paralyzed him even more.

“Just relax, I-I won’t hurt you or anything. You’d know that if you recognized me.”

“I...” Morty sobbed and grabbed the seat in front of him with shaking fists, grasping on so tight that the knuckles appeared white. “...know you?”

“You probably know me better than I’ve let anybody else know me,” the man mumbled.

“Not true...”

“It’s true,” he said, leaning in a little closer. Morty’s stomach was doing flip-flops, but admittedly, the rubbing motion was calming him down a little. “I can explain all of it. I just need some-some time.

Time? Why time? Morty wanted to know the truth now, wanted to know why all of this was happening to him, and what he had done to deserve any of it. He couldn’t wait, he just couldn’t.

“No,” he cried. “Please.”

“You have to tell me what you remember, Morty. You have to tell me all of it. Look at me.” The man pulled Morty to him so that they were about maybe six inches apart. His face was so uncomfortable to see; something about the way he looked seemed so...off. The eyes were so intense, the face so sharp and empty, the hair so vivid and crazy. He seemed like a dramatic, soulless conjuration of a person, not real, not exactly human. There was something about him that Morty couldn’t quite put his finger on. He definitely would have remembered a face like that. “There may be truths that you know about your life that may not actually be truths at all. What if I told you that there were pieces of your life that you were missing, or memories that never occurred? Could you ever believe me if I said those things?”

“How-How could I...?”

“You’ll just have to trust me. I-I’m gonna find somewhere safe for us, somewhere quiet, a-and then maybe you’ll have calmed down enough by then to tell me what you know. I need you to think, Morty, think really hard. And when you tell me these things about your life, I need you to listen to the truth, the real truth, and be open to it. Some things might start to make sense to you, maybe more than they ever have before.”

And with that, the man clamored back into the front seat and took control of the steering wheel once more.

“Ship, turn auto-pilot off.”

“Turning auto-pilot off.”

The vehicle soared through the blackness faster and faster, until the space around them began to warp into something inexplicable, like beautiful paint strokes of light dancing across their field of vision.

“Your name,” Morty mustered. “I-I want to-to know.”

The man shook his head and peeked back at Morty from the rearview mirror. “I can’t do that, not now. Even you seeing me could compromise all of this. I-I need to piece together exactly what happened so I can figure out how to fix this. I can’t risk your memories being corrupted.”

The whole thing seemed so ridiculous. How was Morty supposed to remember this guy if he wouldn’t even give him a clue?

“We’re almost there,” he informed him. “I need you to start thinking back. Maybe from about...let’s say eleven until now. That should cover what I need to know.”

Morty thought about it because in this moment he saw no reasonable option other than complying with the man’s request. He had already concluded that he was too weak to fight back and not smart enough to escape or even begin to guess at a way home.

He thought about his eleventh birthday, sitting at that same worn, wooden table in the dining room in front of a cake, candles shining bright in his eyes. He remembered his mom, and his dad, and his big sister, the three ever-present guests at the annual celebration of Morty’s birth; probably the only three that cared about it, in fact. He remembered presents, and food, and playing until he passed out from exhaustion. He remembered the final shreds of happiness that he had before he started to realize how tilted the world really was, the pieces of innocence slipping away like thieves in the night, so quiet and discreet that you’d almost never notice the difference unless you really cared to look. Suffice to say, no one ever did.

The man cleared his throat as the ship began to lower, turning back with a warning look in his coal-like eyes. “We’re here. It’s safe, but not safe enough to leave my side, got it? Don’t try any funny business. I promise y-you won’t survive whatever you find out there.”

“Got it,” Morty choked, his breathing finally falling to a slower rate. His lungs burned so badly that he thought he might cry again.

“Okay.” The vehicle came to a halt, sitting flat in the middle of a clearing, too bright and hallucinatory to be real. Morty tried to figure out if he was still dreaming, or perhaps in a coma. At the end of the meadow, right before the thick vegetation turned into ugly, misshapen trees, there stood a tiny log cabin, sticking out like a sore thumb in the psychedelic scenery. “You can open the door. Just remember what I said.” He turned around completely to glare then, his expression absolutely villainous. “I already know that I’m fast enough to catch you if you run.”

Morty opened the door slowly and stepped out with unsteady legs. He turned around to look at the vehicle, a big, ugly spaceship made out of what looked like junk. God, didn’t things like this only happen in movies? There was no way that this could be happening for real.

“Come on,” the man said, gesturing toward the cabin. He was tall and lanky, but underneath his shirt he appeared to have hard muscle. Morty became slightly more terrified than before, if that was even possible. He followed along dutifully, staying two or three feet behind until they reached the door. The stranger fished a key ring out of his pocket filled with what looked to be about a hundred keys, all of varying shapes and sizes. He figured he should no longer be surprised when he chose the correct one on the first try and turned the lock, pushing the old door open with his shoulder and urging Morty inside.

It wasn’t much to look at, a dingy little wood hideaway with two rooms, one of which Morty assumed to be the bathroom. The main room held one bed and a wood stove, a shitty wooden chair and a nearly-broken table to match.

“Sit wherever you want, I know there’s not much option.”

The chair appeared to be on its last leg, but Morty figured he was light enough to not exceed its most likely fragile weight limit. It’s not as if he was going to chance the bed. He sat down carefully and watched with caution as the man got comfortable at the very end of the mattress, stretching out his long legs across the floor.

“Fuuuck that feels good, I haven’t been able to stretch my legs like that for the last sixty-two hours,” he sighed, rolling his neck and shoulders as if to emphasize his point. He turned his attention to Morty then, and he shrunk in on himself just a little bit. “How are you feeling? Okay?”

“Yeah,” Morty said quietly. “Just a little...foggy, I guess...tired.”

The man shrugged. “That’s pretty normal for you after an episode like that. Do you think that we’ll be able to-to get down to business?”

Morty swallowed hard. “I th-think so.”

“Okay,” he said. “So let’s start from eleven. What do you remember? I need big things, things that you know with deep certainty that you remember clearly. Things that impacted you. I need to know the deep stuff, Morty. I-It’s probably going to be hard, b-b-but I need you to do this for me, a-and for yourself.”

Morty nodded and started to think, against his better judgement. What if there was some validity to what this guy was saying? He had already seen enough things today that didn’t align with what he had known before to be reality. If there was some possibility that pieces of his life had been locked away in some part of his brain that he couldn’t touch, then didn’t he owe it to himself to try and figure out if those things really could be accessed? What harm could really come to him anyways if, in the end, it turned out that it had all just been some elaborate ruse by a crazy kidnapper? He was already facing a near-certain death. Should it matter to him now if he dared to take a step into the unknown?

He didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, but he spoke despite himself.

“A month after m-my eleventh birthday...my parents got into a big fight.”

“And what are their names?” The man asked attentively.

“Beth and Jerry Smith. I-I-I have a sister, too. Her name is Summer.”

“Right. Go ahead.”

Morty swallowed hard. “I walked into the-the kitchen to get something to eat, and out in the garage I heard this loud crash, b-but I was too scared to check it out. I’ve had r-real bad anxiety since I was seven. So I just stood and waited, and then I heard...yelling; my mom screaming at my dad about something I couldn’t quite hear. When I got closer I heard her crying, y-y’know? Like she was really frustrated. And she said, ‘Jerry, you fucking idiot, i-if you ever pull something like that again, I’ll leave your pathetic ass and take my children with me’. Th-That part I remember real clear.”

“Okay. And did he say anything to her?”

“N-No, he just...” Morty took a deep breath and trained his eyes on the ceiling to hone in his emotions. “...started crying.”

“Are your parents still together?” The stranger inquired. Morty wondered if he genuinely didn’t know.

“Y-Yeah.”

“So if your mom was to leave your dad, where do you think she would take you and your sister?”

“Um, I-I don’t know. She likes her job now. She’d probably make my dad leave.”

“Well, let’s say she was the one that decided to leave,” the man offered. “Where do you think she’d take you?”

“Probably Seattle. That’s where my mom grew up.”

Something about that seemed to bother the stranger quite a bit, because as soon as Morty was finished speaking he stood up in a near-rage, looking like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Morty scooted the chair back a little.

“Your mother...did not grow up in Seattle,” he said with venom in his voice.

“Then where did she grow up?”

“Walla Walla,” he said, fists finally deciding to rest, shaking, at his sides.

“Why would my mom lie to me about growing up in Seattle?” He asked. It was such a minute detail to hide, something that Morty would never inquire about further or even think to question in the first place. Beth hadn’t really talked all that much about her childhood, anyways.

“Because there were truths about her life that she didn’t want you to know, Morty. Things that she was trying to keep a secret.”

Morty bit the inside of his cheek and thought long and hard, content when the stranger didn’t press him further before he was ready. “So if I’m looking a-at this whole thing correctly, the reason I don’t-don’t know about who you are has something to do with my mom?”

“That’s right,” the man allowed. “But I need you to keep going. Can you remember how old you were when she told you where she grew up?”

“Well, she’s not really a-a person who talks about herself a lot. We didn’t have those conversations regularly.”

The man sat back down and ran his fingers through his hair nervously. “So you can’t remember?”

“Maybe it was like, last year or something. I don’t know. I-It could have been before that.”

“So fairly recently?”

“I guess so, i-if you’re looking at the whole timeline,” Morty shrugged.

“Did she tell you a lot of things about herself around that time in particular?” Morty felt like he was in some sort of psychiatric interview. He almost expected the stranger to pull out a notepad and start jotting things down.

He took a moment to ponder it. It did seem that the older he got, the more open Beth became when talking about her life and the things she felt inside. Morty felt that just came with the territory of maturity, though. The more you grew the more your parents treated you like you were, well, human. That didn’t necessarily make it a coincidence. She wasn’t even very good at it.

“Yes.”

“Like what?”

“She told me a little about her growing up, a-and why she resented my dad so much. She would sometimes talk about her dreams. Oh, and she finally told me about what happened to the rest of her family. After that I-I started kind of seeing the reason why she drank. I felt bad for her.”

“Tell me about the last part,” he demanded, his brow furrowed. “What happened to the rest of her family?”

“She told me that when she got pregnant with Summer and moved in with my dad, her family home got robbed with her parents and little sister inside...and that whoever the thief was didn’t want them to talk, so...y’know. He-He killed them,” Morty recanted. It was such an awful thing for someone to experience. It was in those moments where she spoke of it that he could be the most forgiving of her. When all of the people closest to you in your life die...how do you continue to live on?

The stranger shook his head stiffly and closed his eyes. “What I’m about to tell you, Morty, i-it could make you question a lot of things. You’ll probably question me, a-and you have every right to,” he said, hands held up in compliance. “But I need you to prepare for the reality that what I’m about to tell you could be true. In the end, all of this is going to make sense.”

“I-I can take it,” Morty dared. “I want to know.”

“Your mom’s family wasn’t murdered. Your grandmother died of a heart attack and your grandfather is still alive. She never even had a little sister.”

Morty laughed in disbelief. “That can’t be true. I’ve seen the graves.”

“What are the names on them? Do you remember?”

“Of course I do. Dahlia, Edward, and Roslyn Ledger. We’ve visited three times since she told me, mostly near the holidays.”

“Her maiden name isn’t Ledger, Morty. It’s Sanchez, a-and your sick in the head fucking mother has been taking you to the graves of strangers to uphold her pointless lie!” The man shouted, standing once more to kick the side of the bed in anger. “Christ, if I had known it was this bad I would have come back much sooner. She’s gone completely delusional. If only I could figure out exactly how she did it...” He pressed his knuckles into the wall, gazing into the grains of the wood as if it held all of the answers.

“You’re not making any sense. H-How can you prove any of this is true if I can’t even place you at any given point in my life? You have to-to tell me who you are.”

The man crouched down next to him on the floor, his eyes smoldering. The lines in his face indicated his age, but they weren’t pronounced enough to declare him unattractive. He was definitely on the older side, perhaps old enough to be a grandparent or a great-uncle. He bore no resemblance to Morty and his family though, no distinctive characteristics that connected them to each other.

“I-I need to you put aside your fear for a minute and do something that might scare you, okay?” The man asked. Morty’s heart rate immediately increased in pace by nearly triple.

“W-What is it?”

“I need you to pretend for a moment that you do remember me, that maybe at some point in your life you and I did cross paths and you came to know me as a person. Look me in the eye and tell me what you feel. That’s it, it’s very simple. I promise I won’t do anything to hurt you. I just need you to tell me what emotions come to your mind when you don’t look at me in this-this big light of confusion.”

“I don’t know if I can do that...”

“Please,” the man urged. “Just try.”

“Okay,” Morty agreed worriedly. He peered into the stranger’s deep eyes, tried to shake the fear and anxiety from his brain as hard as he could mentally allow himself, and as he felt some of those emotions fall by the wayside he began to notice something else, something...different. It felt familiar and yet so foreign, so light and yet so heavy. He couldn’t possibly explain it. “I-It’s weird,” he huffed, feeling a little nervous. “I feel weird. I-I don’t like looking at you.”

“Don’t you feel that there might be a reason for that?” He asked. “I need you to keep looking. Really pick your brain, e-even if it’s uncomfortable. It might help you remember.”

Looking so intimately, being so close...it felt unnatural, like Morty should be recoiling as far away as the room would allow him, but he didn’t. The shame of it still sat there, yet it wasn’t enough to push him away. Strange. His anxiety usually won out in these internal arguments of ‘do or don’t’. There was an aura about the man before him that put a part of him at ease somehow, a curiosity that kept him from averting his gaze.

“It’s comfortable, but it feels like it shouldn’t be. A-And talking to you, f-for some reason it’s not as hard as it is with other strangers I meet. I feel like I’m going a little crazy t-to be honest.”

“You’re not crazy, Morty. Your body is still remembering what your brain can’t.”

“I just can’t figure out what it was...o-our relationship. The thought of it makes me nervous but i-it’s different from before. It’s almost like I feel, I don’t know, guilty, or something. It doesn’t make any sense,” Morty murmured, and it was then that his anxieties took over once more and he broke gazes with the stranger.

“I know it’s a lot. I understand if you need a minute to take it all in. I just want you to know that I-I’m not lying to you. I have no reason to.” The man stood from his crouched position and walked the small space across the room to the exit. “I’m gonna have a smoke outside. And just because we’re a little more comfortable with each other doesn’t mean I trust you any more than you trust me. I’m going to be right outside that door. D-Don’t make me regret being nice to you.”

“O-Okay,” Morty agreed, watching with bated breath until the door finally shut. His brain felt so scrambled, and truthfully, it was starting to become painful. Pressing his own psyche for such precious and buried information, it was more work than he could have imagined. In it’s own way it was a form of self-torture, another way for him to pluck the cohesive threads of what the people around him wanted him to believe was reality and dare to see if they could be broken. It was almost as if some part of him had to fight against the current, had to seek out the opposite of the norm and dive in head-first during those moments when it seemed like the least reasonable thing to do. Maybe there was something seriously wrong with him.

The things that were being said to him...they were bigger than threads, however. The power of those words, if proven to be true, it wouldn’t just break Morty’s reality, it would destroy the very fabric of his entire universe. Just exactly what was he supposed to do if all of this stranger-than-fiction mumbo jumbo ended up being real? It felt like the entire trajectory of his life had just been kicked off of a fucking cliff in a matter of minutes. He had never considered himself a very strong or brave person. Was this something that he even had the capacity to stick out? Knowing that there was no one in life that he could really trust had to be one of the loneliest feelings in the world. He wondered if that was a truth he could ever even be willing to swallow.

There were no windows in the cabin for Morty to look outside, no indication that the threat of the stranger lurking just beyond the door was real or not, and it put him on edge. What if the next person to open the door wasn’t the stranger at all? There was no way for him to prepare himself for whatever would come next. The only thing he had was time, and the worst part was that he didn’t even know how much of it he had. He worried at the inside of his cheek like he did when he knew he was on the brink of a particularly horrendous panic attack and kept his eyes trained on the door for what felt like an eternity.

“There’s gonna be a storm,” came that same gruff voice as the door suddenly swung open. “Where we’re at, that’s not a-a good thing.”

Morty was once again thrown off, and some of the tension in his chest faded in light of his spirit of inquiry. “What do you mean?”

He smelt cigarette smoke and alcohol as the stranger squeezed past him toward the stove, bending to collect a considerable amount of wood in his lengthy arms.

“This place only gets a storm maybe two or three times a moon cycle, but when it does, the temperature drops to fifty degrees below freezing and the wind makes this place shake like a bitch.”

“A-Are we gonna be okay?”

“Well, I-I knew about the cold when I built this place so I made special insulation to protect us from that, b-but the wind will probably take you off guard a little.”

“Aw jeez,” Morty sighed.

“We’ll be fine,” the man reassured him, dodging the cloud of ash that ambushed him as he opened the door to the stove and chucked the firewood in. “Why don’t we try talking about another memory while we wait? Tell me something about being twelve. A-A lot happens at that age.”

“If by ‘a lot’ you mean the lack of production of serotonin in my brain, then yeah, a-a lot happened at that age,” Morty huffed, arms crossed tight over his chest. “My parents were fighting all the time by that point.”

“Do you remember what they used to fight about?”

Morty rolled his eyes. “What didn’t they fight about it? One of them could have breathed the wrong way and it would have started World War Three right there at the-the dinner table. That was also around the same time that Summer stopped hanging out with me as much. I had no one.”

“Have you always felt that way?” The man inquired.

“I guess for most of my life I have, yeah.”

The stranger’s mouth turned into a grim line for a split second, but it was gone before Morty could tell if it was genuinely real. He guessed the man to be the type to typically hold a good poker face.

“Walk me through the moment y-you knew that you were depressed. How much of it do you remember?” He asked, moving back to his old position on the bed.

“Not much, I-I guess I just woke up one day and I felt...tired, m-more tired than I had ever felt before. It was a different kind of tired too, not like I was about to fall asleep, but more like I was about to just...give up.”

“What were you tired of?”

“I was tired of b-being a loser, tired of being stupid and lonely and awkward and unwanted. I was tired of fighting and violence, t-tired of people who stood by and said nothing. All of it. I remember thinking over and over that I wanted the world to stop moving entirely sometimes so I could take a break and breathe, but it never did. I felt l-like I was drowning.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

Morty chuckled humorlessly. “That’s the only way I feel.”

“What about at thirteen? Nothing changed for you?”

“Thirteen was even worse. My mom became so distant she might as well have been a stranger, she-she was like a woman possessed.”

“Possessed by what?”

Morty shook his head. “I don’t know. That was the one thing she would never talk to me about.”

“And how were you feeling around that time?”

“Old, like I was blinking and time was just suddenly passing by. It was like I was aging in my sleep, waking up with new philosophies and opinions in my head with no idea as to how they got there. I was seeing the world in this new, scary way. I started to become self-destructive.”

The stranger quirked a suspicious brow. “In what way?”

Morty paused, skin crawling at the thought of sharing such intimate parts of his life aloud. “I-I don’t know if I should...”

“P-Please Morty, y-you have to-to tell me. I-I’m not just asking you for a synopsis of your life for the hell of it, I-I’m looking for behaviors, clues that could-could help me piece together exactly how you lost your memories. A-Any little detail could be the information I need to fix all of this.”

“A-And what exactly is there to fix, huh?” Morty demanded suddenly, surprising even himself. “My life is shitty a-and miserable enough as it is. How is finding out that all of it is also a lie supposed to help me? And what do you get out of me gaining back my memories anyways? How does that benefit you?”

“Y-You know what, Morty? Y-You’re just as stubborn and fucking miserable as you were back then! If you wanna go-go back home and play pretend, lay on your fucking bed and cry yourself to sleep wondering why pieces of your life are missing and let your crazy ass mom take you to the graves of dead people that she never knew near fucking Christmas time, th-then just say the word! Because I can just go back to my condo on Kanen 9 and sit on the beach drinking myself back into a coma to forget that you ever existed.”

“Th-Then why don’t you just f-fucking do it, Rick!?” Morty shouted suddenly. The both of them stopped dead in their tracks, two sets of wide eyes staring at each other in between the silence.

“What did you just say?”

The tone of the man’s voice made Morty nervous. “I-I don’t know where that-that came from, I-I’m sorry, I-I-I don’t even know a Rick, I j-just—“

“No, Morty, you don’t understand,” the stranger interrupted, face incredulous. “Y-You just remembered.”

“Y-Your name? Th-That—I mean, R-Rick is your name?” Morty asked, completely flustered. How could that be right? Up until five seconds ago Morty wouldn’t have known this guy from Adam. Somehow the argument had triggered something buried deep within him, something not even he understood the likes of. Unlike the movies, the rest of the memories did not come back in a flood. In fact, they didn’t come back at all. Morty still remained in the shadows of that looming vault of thought, unable to access the code for entry. He felt as if he had only figured out a single number in the combination, a small hint that the vault might be a truly real and undeniable thing that he could tap into. In this moment he began to feel more lost and confused than he ever had before. In light of this, a large part of him still didn’t want to believe that it could be real.

”Y-Yeah,” the man sighed, pulling a flask from his coat pocket and taking a long sip. “Rick is my name.”

The house began to shake violently then, as if being rocked by an earthquake. Morty tumbled out of the chair and onto the floor, hitting his shoulder hard on the corner of the wall as he tried to catch himself. Rick immediately rushed to his aid as everything vibrated and moved around them.

“M-Morty, are you okay?”

“I-I’m fine, it just stings a little,” he winced, allowing Rick to help him stand.

“There’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom, I can get you something for the pain.”

“No!” Morty interrupted suddenly, startling himself once more. “D-Don’t leave now. The-The shaking, it freaks me out.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll wait until it’s over,” Rick said soothingly, sitting Morty on the bed. It was scary how easily he was allowing himself to be handled by this complete stranger when only an hour ago he was almost sure he was going to die by his hands. ”You get used to it after awhile. The weather here is always predictable.”

“Did you and I fight a lot?” Morty wondered, steering the conversation back to unknown waters.

Rick laughed. “Y-You and I used to fight about everything. You were always trying to keep me in line.”

“I-It seems like I don’t care about the lines as much these days,” Morty mumbled.

“You and I experienced lines that you couldn’t think of in your wildest dreams,” Rick told him. “I bet you’d still be the same in a lot of ways. A-At least, that’s the way it seems now.”

“It’s not like I would know anything about that,” Morty shrugged. The violent shaking stopped then, leaving a thick veil of silence in the air. Yet, Morty still felt there was a question that needed to be answered before they proceeded any further. “My mom’s reason for making me forget...was it worth all of the trouble?”

Rick rocked back on his heels and stared off into the distance, his eyes empty. “Th-That’s the thing about all of this, Morty. You never had a say in that. All I wanted to do is give you the opportunity to decide for yourself. If at the end of all of this, y-you want me to make all of it go away again, well...I can do that for you. It will be like none of this ever happened.”

“Did we do something bad?” Morty guessed.

“If I tell you, there’s a possibility that you could never truly remember. That’s why things have to be this way.” The man sat down beside him as far way as the mattress would allow, but goosebumps still stampeded across Morty’s arms despite the near-sweltering warmth of the cabin. “You have to tell me about your self-destructive behaviors, Morty. I need to know the side-effects that you’re experiencing. Now that some part of you knows that you used to know me...maybe you’ll be a little more open to helping me find out how to get the fuck out of this labyrinth that your mother created in your head.”

“Fine,” Morty gave in begrudgingly, his stomach turning at the thought. “I started having these bouts of feeling as if...things weren’t exactly, I don’t know, real? So during those times I’d self-harm or-or put myself in dangerous situations to see if I was still really alive.”

“Situations like what?”

“Laying on train tracks, running in front of traffic, standing on the edges of cliffs or getting lost somewhere in the woods...drinking, sometimes. Always trying to chase adrenaline, always trying to push the envelope a little more...always trying to feel something besides empty and confused.” Shame sat like hot lead in Morty’s stomach. These were things he had always kept to himself, memories that belonged to him and him only. He felt exposed, vulnerable, guilty. He felt like he wanted to die. He knew that someone like Rick probably found him pitiable, and the thought made him hate himself that much more. Why was this guy even bothering to waste his time?

Something about the recanting of Morty’s self-destructive tales seemed to make Rick sad. “Your body is trying to relive physical manifestations of the past to make up for the gaps. It might be that the only way to make you remember is to-to recreate the types of passionate emotions that you used to feel back then. I just have to think of something intense enough to trigger that kind of response.”

“This sounds like something I’m probably not going to enjoy very much,” Morty guessed.

“Well, we’re going to do a series of tests. I’ll only use the most extreme option as a last resort. I’m hoping it won’t have to come to that, though. I just want you to know that some of the-the trials we’re going to run are going to be indicative of my character, which hasn’t always been the kindest or the most selfless. If you decide at any point that you can’t do this, and that you want me to make you forget again, just say the word. The things you could remember might even make you hate me. I’m prepared to deal with the consequence if that’s the case.”

“We’ve come this far,” Morty pointed out. “I have to know the truth.”

“Alright then, I need you to do a favor for me,” Rick said, retrieving the key ring from his pocket and handing it to Morty. “I left a bottle of whiskey underneath the front seat in my ship. Would you mind going to get it?”

Morty peered at the door and then back at Rick. “Right now? You said there was a bad storm.”

Rick shrugged. “There is. I wanna warm myself up with a little booze. Here, I’ll give you this bracelet. It regulates body temperature.”

“Why don’t you wear it then?” Morty demanded angrily.

“Morty, I obviously don’t just want the booze to keep me warm; don’t be an idiot. Just be careful about your shoulder, if you fall again you might really hurt it,” Rick reminded him, attaching the bracelet to Morty’s thin wrist.

“What about the wind?”

Rick snorted. “Hope that you get inside the ship before it starts up again?”

“I don’t really know if I’m comfortable with...”

Rick slapped his hands down onto his lap loud enough to startle Morty, his expression threatening. “Would you rather we just get to the most extreme option? Because you’re going to like it a hell of a lot less and there’s not really going to be much ‘option’ to it.”

“N-No, jeez. I’ll go,” Morty said, hands held up defensively as he stood from the bed. “Which key unlocks it?”

“The one I got made on Jalinak, in that seedy shop next to that bloodthirsty drug lord’s huge mansion, remember? I heard gunshots and I did not go to investigate it. That guys eats babies, Morty.”

“I think I would remember something like that,” he said with little humor in his tone.

“Well, maybe if the wind gets bad enough, you suddenly will remember. You’re gonna have to if you don’t wanna get dragged fifteen miles into the-the Pythagian wilderness.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“Nothing is really necessary and we’re all gonna be dead someday.”

Alright, so maybe getting dragged into some planetary alien wilderness was worth getting away from this maniac. Morty thought again about figuring out a way to escape, but he was no pilot of science fiction aircraft. He didn’t even know how to drive a car.

“Alright, w-well, if I die, I just want you to know that you should blame yourself f-forever!” Morty cried like an insolent child, slamming the door behind him to get the last word. He felt like he was getting whiplash from this guy. Just what was he all about, anyways? Morty couldn’t get a read on him.

He looked out across the clearing to the ship, seeming farther away than it somehow had before.

All around him the vegetation was covered in a thick, crusty layer of ice, slippery, wet, hard to navigate, and most importantly, painful to fall onto if knocked over by house-shaking winds.

“Fucking asshole,” Morty mumbled to himself, beginning his slow trek toward a bottle of booze that he hoped contained all of the memories that he was just now realizing he had forgotten.

He held the key ring in front of his eyes in the growing darkness, trying to decide which one looked like it was made next to a drug lord’s house. God, what was his life becoming?

The walk was dangerous, and several times Morty found himself trying to gain his bearings on the nothingness. His shoulder ached something fierce as he continued to catch himself at the last possible second, each time more nearly fatal than the last. The winds were beginning to kick up from somewhere in the south; Morty could feel their terrifying vibrations in the ground. As he tried to hurry his heart began to hammer in his chest, and a cold sweat started at the base of his spine. Adrenaline. Morty saw exactly what Rick was trying to do.

He caught himself on the ship as the wind began to pick up, it’s deadly breath on his neck. He began to jam keys into the door, any one that could fit, but each try proved more fruitless than the last. The ground beneath him began to rumble.

“Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, oh fuck,” he repeated like a mantra, over and over as he continued to sort through the mass of keys. He was definitely going to die. The wind began to pry his fingers from the mirror, first one, then another, and he was too weak to keep holding on. His other hand continued to work tirelessly to the last second to open the lock, even as he felt himself slipping away, the back of his ankles being dragged violently through the jagged ice as he tried to plant himself to the ground, and then suddenly, suddenly...

_”Morty, I-I need you to stay in the ship while I get the part I need for the locking mechanism.”_

_”Why do I have to stay?” Morty whined, propping his elbow on the passenger door as he looked out the window._

_”B-Because, Morty, this place is-is next to that really famous drug lord’s house, y-y’know the one that tried to kill me like four months ago? He’s gonna be really pissed if he sees my ship, so I need you to keep watch. I-I’m doing this for you, so the-the least you could do is sit here and do absolutely fucking nothing be-besides look around. You’re good at that, anyways. Ship, lock the doors when I exit.”_

“Ship, holy fuck, unlock the doors!” Morty screamed, grabbing onto the door handle with all the power left inside of him.

“Unlocking the doors,” the ship repeated. The door flew open at breakneck speed and Morty grabbed the head of the driver’s seat, barely pulling himself in.

“Close the doors,” he huffed with a final breath, collapsing against the steering wheel as the ship did as it was told. The air in the cabin settled, and Morty was finally able to take air into his lungs again, even though it burned fiercely and each rise and fall of his chest made his shoulder scream with pain. He looked down to appraise the damage and winced at the site. He probably shouldn’t have grabbed the door with the bad arm.

“We’ll think about that later,” Morty said as the ship began to shake all around him.

_”Alright, Morty, try that bad boy out!” Rick called from the front of the ship._

_Morty smiled giddily and looked toward the ceiling of the ship for the speaker he felt should be there but never was. “Ship, lock the doors!”_

_”New user downloaded: Morty Smith. Access level: three. Locking the doors.”_

_”Now you won’t get locked out when I get too drunk!” Rick shouted happily._

Tears streamed down Morty’s face. It was such a small piece of a memory, such a weird and otherwise insignificant moment, but it was all the confirmation that Morty needed to tell him that the things Rick was saying were true. They had known each other in what felt to him like another life. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that information now?

He sobbed violently as the entire planet shook around him, finally allowing all of that stress, that tension and frustration to become physically evident, to truly let his guard down for a second and feel the way he knew he was fated to feel about all of this: completely and utterly hopeless. So many questions hung around him now, so many lies, so many things that he couldn’t even begin to grasp or understand the severity of. He had no idea where it was all supposed to go from here. Could he somehow hit a lower rock bottom than this?

Regardless of all of this inner turmoil, the wind continued turning huge gusts all around him, keeping him from telling the one person who just might understand it the most. He leaned down and clumsily grabbed the bottle of whiskey from underneath the seat with his good arm.

“Fuck it,” he sighed, wincing as he shrugged despite the pain and screwed the cap off of the bottle.

He took a long swig, expression souring at the harsh flavor. He didn’t drink often, usually only when all of the negative shit in his head became too loud to keep ignoring and there was no other way to put it to rest aside from drowning it. He usually always tried to find one good thing in his day. The way things were now, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to find one good thing within the year or maybe even his life. He felt so empty that the numb in his head began to feel painfully aware of itself, yet he was unable to stop it. Just how much further could he become detached from the people and things around him? Before, there was always this sense of something better, of some turn-around event in his life that would make him realize that the good really did outweigh the bad. Through all of it, no matter how shitty things got, he had always carried with him a little sliver of optimism. Now he wasn’t even sure if optimism truly existed, or if it was just another human concept designed to cover up the consistently awful and tragic things that happened in everyone’s daily lives, just another lie that was fed to the masses to keep them going a little longer, making a little more money, finding someone who can tolerate them a little bit more than the last person, shitting out a couple more kids. All of it was a sham. If everything around him was a lie, then did anything truly matter at all?

The wind ceased abruptly then, the ship rattling a few more times before settling once more onto the ice-covered clearing. Morty stared out the windshield and counted to thirty, eyes blank and emotionless. His mind was running at a thousand miles a minute, but he couldn’t truly think. It felt as if he were a stranger in his own body.

Once he was sure it was safe he popped the door open and twisted the cap back on the whiskey.

“Ship, lock and shut the doors,” he called, beginning his journey back to the cabin, taking his time but not really caring anymore if he was swept away by the storm. He took a deep breath before reaching the front door and tried to think of the proper thing to say in a situation like this. He had no idea how to face a person that he had known before and forgotten. It wasn’t like anyone ever told you the proper social etiquette for the really hard situations anyways. Once again Morty realized that it didn’t really matter and turned the knob, immediately feeling the sweltering warmth of the room wash over his skin.

“Rick—“

“Fucking Christ, Morty, w-what happened to your arm?” Rick cried, immediately rushing to tend to the wound. Morty felt that somewhere within him he should have harbored a sense of anger, knowing that the blame for the injury mostly laid on Rick’s shoulders. It almost seemed like a small price to pay for the truth, however. Even feeling the way he felt now, he could say with certainty that he would rather have this than allow the strings of his life to be pulled by someone else.

“I-I had to hold onto the door because the storm started up again, but once I figured out how to unlock it the wind threw it open a-and I was using the bad arm so I wouldn’t get-get ripped away...” Morty mumbled, his head swimming.

“You dislocated your shoulder,” Rick told him, fingers pressing lightly into the damaged tissue. “I-I can fix it but it’s going to take some time.”

“Y-You’re not going to say anything about the part w-where I remembered how to unlock the ship?”

“I figured I’d let you tell me as you saw fit,” Rick said, taking the bottle from Morty and placing it on the table before leading him into the bathroom. Morty was unsurprised to find it was just as unimpressive as the main living space.

“It was a small memory, only a hint, but we were both there. You were getting the-the mechanism to download my user data into the vocal recognition system. I saw it l-like I was there, in the ship, looking at you...”

Rick sat Morty down on the edge of the tub. “I need you to take off your shirt.”

Morty paused for only a moment before complying, recoiling with pain as his torn-up t-shirt grazed the tender skin of his shoulder.

It was Rick’s turn to stop then, his eyes wide and angry as he ran a self-exam on Morty’s entirety. He felt exposed but yet he refused to hide himself, like an urge to prove something that he couldn’t explain.

“Some of those bruises are too old to be from falling on ice,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I wake up with them but I don’t remember where they come from,” Morty admitted, wondering if it was something that might actually be considered unusual. Didn’t most people wake up with bruises they couldn’t explain?

“There’s too many there for you to just be hurting yourself in your sleep or bumping into something a-and not remembering it,” Rick argued.

“Look, I-I’m telling you I don’t remember, alright?” Morty hissed as Rick bent below the sink for the first-aid kit.

“I should have taken you to a lab, d-done some medical screening. I-I could have assessed the brain damage, maybe the frequency of times that she...”

“Don’t you think you’re poking around my brain enough?” Morty demanded. “N-Now you’re going to tell me it’s still not enough? W-What else do you wanna do, Rick? Use me as bait? Threaten to kill me? What’s it-it going to be? I-I still don’t understand what your gain is in all of this.”

“God, don’t you ever shut up?” Rick complained. “Some things never change. Lean forward so I can fix you.”

“It seems you’re all about fixing me,” Morty muttered under his breath, continuing to do as he was told. Rick’s hands were cold and gentle. Morty had to admit they felt kind of nice.

“I-I know you, Morty. I know that you would want to know these things.”

“Then please,” Morty begged. “I’ve been giving you so much. Just tell me something, anything.”

“I don’t know if you could handle it.”

“I’m tired of everyone deciding what’s best for me!” Morty shouted, pushing Rick away with his good arm. “If you make me relive every memory of my life with you then we’ll spend all-all eternity trying to play catch up. Isn’t there something you could do that would make me feel strongly enough to remember all of it? I-I mean, it seems like we were close, a-and there must have been something bad that happened to end all of it...I don’t care how much it hurts, or all the things it might fuck up. I don’t have anything else to lose, a-and I-I-I want to know, I have to, I just—“

Morty felt himself being pulled forward, felt a strong hand on his torn-up shoulder making him feel hot with pain, his brain thinking in slow motion, his body trying to catch up with reality, but everything was so fast, so shocking and terrifying and inexplicably dazzling, like he was seeing light for the very first time, and he felt immediately overwhelmed with thought, sitting on the edge of the tub completely paralyzed as Rick pressed their lips together and Morty was flooded with a million emotions that he had forgotten the feeling of in a hidden double life.

The ordeal was short, maybe only a half of a second at most, but as soon as it was finished Morty could see the room starting to go black, and before he knew it he was collapsing, falling forward onto the wooden floor with only Rick to break his fall. He closed his eyes, and then suddenly everything became suspended in a deep, dark lake of nothing.

Rick cradled Morty’s head as the both of them fell backwards, attempting to use his other arm to cushion the blow on his injured shoulder before it could incur anymore damage. Not that he didn’t know that Morty couldn’t take damage. He just didn’t want to think about it right now.

They landed with a muted thud and Rick took a moment to collect himself before repositioning Morty beside him on the floor.

“Morty, hey, y-you gotta wake up.”

Suffice to say, gentle goading was not going to get him anywhere. He pushed his hand into Morty’s side and shook him, trying to maintain his calm. “Morty!”

Still nothing. Rick chewed the inside of his cheek and let his hand travel down to Morty’s thin wrist. The pulse seemed fine. Whatever just happened likely was a result of an information overload in his brain. He was probably processing so many things in this very moment that he wouldn’t be able to understand when he woke up. Morty was still just a kid, after all, immature and gullible like everyone else his age. Rick had no idea how he was going to react about the things he would see, or even which memories were going to come back to him and which ones weren’t. The idea of not knowing what Morty knew terrified him. Here they were finally, side by side once more, and yet Rick had never felt farther away from him. A sensation of loneliness rose up in him that he tried to shove down, but once again his attempts at getting anything right kept proving to be futile. That want was sitting right in front of him, that need. All he had to do was reach out a hand, a finger, and he would be able to feel him, to know with absolute certainty that he was there and that there was a possibility that the two of them would never be separated again, crazy as it all seemed.

There were so many things wrong with his on both ends, so many mistakes. Rick could barely unravel the puzzle himself. Just how did Beth get this kid to forget such huge chunks of his life without making him realize that he was skipping a beat? It was evident that the memories weren’t erased, just hidden. There was no piece of technology that he knew of that could have those kinds of effects, at least not something made by his hands, anyways.

Morty began to stir then, eyes searching through the blackness underneath his lids. Rick moved to a sitting position then, back propped against the sink. He crossed his arms over his chest to keep them from shaking and gave Morty a moment to collect his bearings. He thought he might faint then too, the suspense was killing him so bad. Would he be able to handle it if Morty woke up and told him that he hated him?

He woke with a gasp, hand flying to his chest as he panted for air. His eyes immediately flew to Rick, wide and unreadable. Rick felt his heart drop to his stomach. Christ, he felt so stupid. He knew he was letting this get the better of him, letting this whole confusing, awful thing consume him and drive him to do and feel certain things that he normally wouldn’t. There was something about Morty, something so deeply rooted inside of Rick that no amount of sex or substance or partying could dislodge it. Rick hated himself for it, wished with every fiber being of his body that he could make it all go away and never think about it for the rest of his miserable life. This kid was quite literally becoming the bane of his entire existence. Yet, Rick couldn’t combat his near-giddiness that Morty might be able to come back to him as he was before. It was an undeniably bittersweet feeling.

“No,” Morty said hollowly, gaze now trained on the ceiling. “Th-That can’t be right, I-I wouldn’t...”

“I shouldn’t have-have done that, I’m sorry. It was too soon,” Rick murmured as he worried away at his bottom lip.

“You and I...” He whispered, repeating it over and over like a mantra. “You and I...You and I, we...”

“How much do you remember?” Rick asked, his heart rate increasing rapidly.

“I know what we did,” Morty cried, letting the tears fall freely down his face. “But I know, I know there’s something else I’m missing.” He sat up abruptly, looking Rick dead in his face as he worked his way around sobs of disbelief. “I-I still can’t remember how I met you.”

“Morty...” Rick spoke, his voice barely audible.

“Tell me!” He demanded. “It doesn’t make sense, it j-just doesn’t. I-I couldn’t have, n-not unless...”

“Unless what?”

Morty’s face was so cold that Rick could feel that ice encase his own heart. “...unless I felt comfortable with you, b-but in my head...y-y-you’re still a stranger, and I-I wouldn’t have, I swear I would never think to, not you, I-I...”

“I think this was a mistake,” Rick said, making his move to stand, but Morty was yanking him back with a surprisingly decent strength, pulling him down to his level and forcing himself on top of Rick, pressing their lips together again, trying to force the pieces together, trying to make it all make sense. “Morty,” Rick protested, but he continued on anyways, gnashing their teeth, cutting their lips, entwining their tongues. It was at that point that Rick knew if he didn’t stop what was going on now he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself, period. He shoved Morty off of him and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, watching cautiously as Morty made a spot for himself in the corner and dropped his head against his knees.

“Please,” he pleaded. “If it’s going to-to be worse I want to know it now. Y-You told me you wanted me to have this decision. I-I-I’m asking you to let me have it.”

Rick sighed and rested his head against the wall, chuckling dryly. “I wonder if you’ll even believe me.”

“Apparently there’s no such thing as the impossible anymore,” Morty said with a sureness to his voice that terrified Rick. He was ready to hear it. Rick had no other choice now but to give in and hope it wouldn’t ruin any of their progress. At least he had the solace of knowing that Morty could gain his memories back with outside influence without affecting the way he remembered them.

“We’re related,” he deadpanned.

“You and I? There’s no way we could...” Morty paused for a moment. Rick could tell that he was doing the mental math, but the silence in the room was so deafening that he thought he might scream just to make it end. “You said my grandfather was still alive,” Morty said to the walls as the exit to the labyrinth finally started to reveal itself. “You knew where my mom grew up.”

“Morty, I-I know it looks bad, it _is_ bad, but...“

“Shut up,” Morty interrupted. “If you know what’s in your best interest, j-just shut up. Please.”

The two of them sat there in the confined space of the bathroom, each experiencing an inner turmoil that neither of them could express aloud.

“How did it start?” Morty asked, keeping his eyes closed. He couldn’t look at Rick, couldn’t face what the two of them had done. Morty felt as if he didn’t really know himself at all.

“I moved in right before your thirteenth birthday...it started maybe a year and a half after that.”

“That was only last year,” Morty remarked with surprise. Inside he was screaming, tearing at the walls of his interior and ruining everything about him that he perceived to be “him”. It didn’t matter anymore. None of it mattered. His entirety had already been soiled before he could even truly give himself a chance at a good life. Maybe deep down he just knew that he didn’t really deserve it. The mundane, the quaint and happy life that most humans strived for their entire lives...that was never truly meant for him, never actually within his grasp. In the past he must have known that better than he did once he forgot all of it. Perhaps there really was no such thing as escaping destiny.

“We were really close,” Rick recollected.

“But how did we become that close?” Morty demanded. “There-There had to have been something that triggered it, s-s-some event, or-or disaster, something—“

Rick shook his head sadly. “It wasn’t like that, Morty. We did so many things beyond most people’s wildest dreams, good and bad, m-mostly bad, all of it crazy, all of it terrifying and sick and wrong, i-it all just started to blur together...we started to rely on each other as the-the only true anchors in the storm. I protected you, showed you things you couldn’t possibly understand, truths you should have never known, a-and you kept me sane. Every chance you got you tried to steer me in the right direction. Somehow in all of that, I-I became selfish, I kept wanting against my means despite wanting to be better for you, a-and somehow, somehow...”

“Do you remember the moment?” Morty whispered, shaking all over. “The moment it first happened...”

“I was drunk, I-I went into your room that night, a-and at first all I wanted was for you to drive the ship to the liquor store for me.” Rick paused, processing the pain of a memory that he had pushed behind months worth of benders. “You woke up, a-a-and you were so mad at me, y-you had a fucking test at school the next morning or something, and you started to push me, y-you were yelling at me and I was so piss-drunk I could barely think. And for some reason, I-I just...” Rick reached his hand out into the empty space as he remembered that moment that changed him in a way he never could have imagined. He was such a fucking idiot. “...patted you on the cheek, a-and told you that you were a good kid. Immediately you just got this relaxed look on your face, l-like you had been waiting your entire life to hear those four words. I was so stupid, so drunk, all I did was look at you with that smile on your face and it broke me. I kissed you, a-and I hated myself immediately, I-I knew that I had fucked up, b-but you started to kiss me back and my mind went blank and I kept acting before thinking...I stopped before it got too far, left you standing alone in your bedroom after what I had done. For the next two weeks I couldn’t even look at you, y-you were so pissed off. I wanted to say sorry but I felt so sick about what I had done.”

“Let me guess,” Morty snickered. “I came to you?”

“Yeah,” Rick said, his voice barely audible. “Y-You told me I wasn’t thinking about what you wanted. You told me I was being selfish and leaving you out of the equation. I didn’t know what to do, I was so torn between protecting you and giving in to what I wanted...”

“But you chose what you wanted,” Morty murmured.

“I’m sorry,” Rick declared seriously. “I don’t seem to have any control when it comes to you. That’s why when your mother found out, I left without putting up a fight. I-I took that option away from you too and I’m sorry. If I had known what she was going to do after that, I-I would have found another way to protect you.”

“Well you know what? I-I’m tired of everyone trying to protect me. All it’s gotten me is more angry and confused a-and fucked up!” Morty exploded, breaking his sorry position on the floor. He began to pace the small space back and forth, over and over again in silence until he couldn’t take it anymore and practically threw open the door to the first room to continue to his anxiety-riddled stride in peace.

Rick came out with the first-aid kit in hand, placing it on the bed to sort through its contents. “This is why I brought you here Morty. I want to give you an option in all of this.”

“And what am I supposed to choose?” Morty scoffed. “Have my fucking memory wiped or be in a romantic relationship with my grandfather?”

“Morty, e-even if you didn’t choose me, I-I wouldn’t take those memories from you unless you asked me to. I’m not going to force you into anything.”

“How is this my life?” Morty wondered aloud. “How did it become like this?”

“It’s my fault,” Rick said. “And even if you don’t believe me, I want you to know that I’m sorry. I should have never come back to Washington in the first place. If you hadn’t met me, everything might have been different for you. Every day I live with that, b-but every day you live it. I can’t take it back, Morty. All I can do is try and make it better.”

“How could you possibly make it better, Rick?” Morty asked, grabbing a fistful of his own hair. “There’s no ‘better’ about any of this!”

The storm outside began to jerk the cabin back and forth once more. Rick took a seat on the mattress, hands gripping the edge for security. “There has to be a-a better way. This memory wipe thing, i-it’s sick, Morty. It’s abuse.”

“And what do you call what we had?” Morty inquired bitterly, resuming his spot on the chair. “Love?”

Rick closed his eyes and tried to ignore that. From an outside perspective he knew how all of this looked, knew that it was wrong. But on the other side of that coin, he also had the knowledge that morality, that human-created scale of good and bad that dictated everything you said and did from the moment you were crapped out into the universe, it didn’t really mean anything. There were billions and billions of ideologies spread all across the galaxy, hypocritical things, nonsensical things, beautiful, peaceful things. The biggest mistake that the creatures at the base of those ideologies were making was believing that their way was the right way, the only way. Too little were they receptive to the idea that all of the time, energy, and hope they put into upholding those beliefs was essentially pointless. It was willful ignorance that kept the curiosity of something more from entering the thoughts of the stubbornly devout, no matter what that devotion might be. For humans that devotion was definitely to a sense of law and order that looked down on the unique and praised the idea of monotonous hypocrisy disguised as righteousness.

In the past these were things that Morty used to understand, woes and apprehension that they had shared together. How could Rick possibly explain to him that they had once loved each other? Morty was old beyond his years back then, always pushing Rick for more responsibility, for more respect as an equal. He was constantly looking for compensation in those days, a way to get back at Rick that would even the score. Too soon he had discovered that the only power in the multiverse that could truly bring Rick Sanchez down lay in his fragile, weary hands. Their relationship had been equal parts adoration, fascination, and codependency. It was hideous at the worst of times and soul-shattering at the best. It had been so many things that Rick couldn’t say now, lest he wanted to tear open memories in his heart so painful that he might actually become crushed under the weight of it all. And yet Morty sat there, waiting. Rick almost felt like crying.

“Sometimes, yeah,” he shrugged. Perhaps the best way to explain things was in the simplest of terms. “But sometimes, it wasn’t. S-Sometimes I abused you a-and you would turn around the next day and get me right back. Sometimes I tried to push you away by doing things that would hurt you. But other times...I-I don’t know. Our relationship, Morty, i-it wasn’t like you’re envisioning. I know that you remember all the physical things, b-but that’s far from what it was all about. We didn’t have a relationship like anything on Earth, o-our circumstances were just too vastly different.”

“Different? L-Look at the two of us, Rick! You think under any other circumstances our situation would have _happened_? Y-You’re some sort of insane genius and I’m just a-a-a stupid, normal kid!”

“No,” Rick countered with a glint in his eye. “You and I may be different in e-every way, young and old, dumb and smart, good and evil, but we always agreed on one thing no matter what: normal was never meant for you, Morty. Never, because...”

“Because why?” Morty just couldn’t understand, how could he? He kept wishing at every turn that he could wake up from this nightmare. The world shaking around him felt so fitting, as if he truly was watching his entire life crumble into pieces.

“Because you’re special, d-don’t you get it?” Rick sighed. “You’re amazing in ways you don’t even realize, the things you’ve survived, the way you’ve persevered. Despite everything you’ve been through, y-you always try to work things out in your own way, no matter what. The kind of person you are Morty, y-you’re meant to do something greater. I think even you still know deep down that you just don’t belong.”

The severity of those words was starting to weigh heavy on Morty. No one had ever told him that he was special before, nor had anyone ever believed in his ability to do something greater. It was strange when he felt a part of himself light up at the praise, but it was stuffed down by disgust before he could even truly think about what it meant. Rick was supposedly his flesh and blood grandfather. How great a person could Morty really be if he had chosen the likes of this man to be intimate with? There had to be something seriously wrong with him. He couldn’t wrap his head around any of it.

“I hate that I can’t remember,” he said, because it was true, perhaps the only feeling within himself that he could honestly decipher. The house started to settle, and the sudden quiet surrounding them felt tense and heavy.

“I-It kills me, Morty, not knowing how to figure this out, not really even being able to help, I-I...” Rick looked so stressed, genuinely worried, and somewhere deep down Morty felt as if that bothered him a little bit, even though he wished desperately that it didn’t.

“Well, you did say that intense emotion could trigger the memories...when you talked about ‘the most extreme option’, what did you mean by that?”

“Trust me, Morty, that option was off the-the table well before it was really even a thought in my head. I-I-I shouldn’t have even mentioned it to you.”

“It’s not a question of what it is,” Morty said quietly. “Do you think it will work?”

“You would never say yes,” Rick insisted. “So it doesn’t really matter.” His eyes looked tired as they peered toward the entryway. “I-I need another smoke.”

Morty was perturbed. It seemed that no one could truly understand that all he ever wanted was to stop being treated like he couldn’t handle the very situations he had placed himself in. Sure, he wasn’t very smart, had some kind of learning disability that made his brain go all stupid the moment he looked at numbers or even tried to think about concentrating on words. It was embarrassing and one of the things he hated the most about himself, but...was it an excuse to be babied by the people around him like it was necessity? It seemed that all of his faults were continually being covered up with the enabling of more bad behavior, like pushing it aside and chalking it up to the side effects of a disability and until it happened again could possibly be the answer to apparently decades worth of shitty parenting and traumatic scenarios. Morty was his own person, and he was going to be damned if he let another fucking soul try to protect him from the terrifying being that was himself because he was young and stupid.

“I’ll go with you,” he stated, no inflection of a request in his voice. “And we’ll talk about it.”

Rick was about to pull his hair out. Why couldn’t this kid understand? The only thing that could make him remember their relationship would be physical manifestations of their coition. Wasn’t that obvious? There would be no other way for him to summon the emotions that Rick was speaking of in a way that would make sense to him. But Rick told him that he would give him the option, and he couldn’t keep going back on that. He knew that as well as Morty did. He was going to have to deal with that rejection all over again for that very reason.

“Fine,” he agreed, making his move to stand. He withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket with one hand and grabbed the bottle of whiskey on the table with the other. Morty followed him out into the tempestuous black night.

“I-I want you to stop jerking me around,” Morty demanded. “Be straight with me. What would I have to do to remember all of this like I never forgot?”

“I-It might not even work, Morty, the risk is so high—“

“I don’t care!” He interrupted. “I’m the one who gets to decide what risks to take, here. Aren’t I the one with the most to lose?”

“What do you think it would be?” Rick hissed. “You already know what sort of relationship we had. You’re smart enough to-to put the pieces together.”

“W-What are you saying, that we’d have to-to sleep together?” Why hadn’t that crossed his mind before? Of course that would create the most passionate emotional response...that is, of course, if Morty could get around the feeling of wanting to vomit at the very suggestion.

“Wouldn’t that make the most sense?” Rick asked matter-of-factly as he lit his cigarette and stared off into the distance.

“I guess, but...”

“I already know that you c-could never do it unless you were comfortable. B-But hey, who knows? Maybe we’ll find another way, someday, th-that is, i-if you would want to, of course,” Rick said, blathering like an idiot. He paused to take a long sip of whiskey.

“What’s the likelihood that if I said yes I would remember you completely?” Morty asked, taking Rick by surprise.

“I’d say we have a fifty-fifty chance at you remembering all of it, a seventy-five percent chance of you remembering at least some of it. But even the medical risks of that a-are high, if you get that much information overload at once it could give you a seizure o-or worse. I may be a genius but I’m no brain surgeon. I don’t know if I’d be able to repair damage l-like that.”

Morty pondered those odds for a moment. If he remembered Rick, would he also remember all of the other things in his past that he now had no recollection of? The things they had experienced together, the events that had led up to his mom brainwashing him, his past, his real past, and all of the truths that came with it. The person that Morty really was, could the answer really be withheld inside of his mind and unlocked upon the acceptance of a deal? Was his artificial virtue important enough for him to protect a second time? Was there even a point in fighting it if he knew deep down that all of this had happened before? He was already tainted with scars that ran deeper than flesh wounds. He knew then that it was time for him to decide how important the truth really was to him. Just how much was he willing to sacrifice?

“I-I have conditions,” he blurted out. There was his answer, then. It seemed that no matter how much he forgot he just couldn’t kick the sense of having to see behind the metaphorical curtain. More than anything, Morty wanted absolute control over his life.

Rick’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest, but he knew that he had to be the voice of reason somehow, that he couldn’t just let Morty jump into this head first without really thinking it through. It would be too easy to just swallow him up completely, to agree to whatever conditions Morty had in mind and allow them to be close and carnal again.

“You’re sure you want to-to put yourself in a situation like that again? Right now you don’t remember the way it feels, the regret, the guilt and anxiety...the way it eats you up inside. It makes you hate yourself in a way you can’t possibly understand until you’ve crossed that line.”

“Then it sounds like the perfect thing to make me remember. It just ‘makes the most sense’, doesn’t it?”

“I wish you remembered how much I hate it when you quote me,” Rick murmured under his breath.

“I’m not asking you to be the devil’s advocate here, Rick. There’s no way I could go back t-to the way things were after this. All I’m asking is for you to listen to-to my conditions so I can get back to knowing the life that I chose f-for myself the first time around, a-and then combine whoever I was then with the person I am now and make my decision from there. _My_ decision, finally, a-and no one else’s. That’s the one thing that was taken from me that I want back more than anything else.”

Rick sighed. He knew as well as anyone else that Morty was a person set in his ways, stubborn and rarely ever willing to listen to reason. Was it really okay for him to allow Morty to make this same mistake all over again?

“Let’s discuss these ‘conditions’ of yours first.”

Morty relaxed visibly, as if he had already won the battle. It pissed Rick off to know that he actually probably had.

“I-I’m going to need some-some time, a-a shower, a-and most importantly, to get the hell out of this wooden box y-you call a house.”

That seemed to irritate Rick. “Why?”

Morty rolled his eyes. “W-Would you wanna fuck in a place you thought you were gonna die in three hours ago?”

“Morty, I’ve fucked in plenty of places where I did die. At least, y’know, temporarily.” Morty held up a hand to stop him.

“I’m not e-even going to try and unpack whatever that means. A-Are you going to agree or not?”

“Are those the only conditions?”

Morty’s cheeks turned scarlet, and Rick couldn’t help but think he looked cute. God, he had it bad for this little twerp. He was so stupid. “Th-There’s two more...”

“Name your price.”

“I-I-I wanna take the-the lead, a-and if I tell you to-to stop, y-y-you have to-to stop, o-or I-I-I-I...” Morty felt like he was choking on words. He was scared shitless, if he was being honest with himself. Most people would kill for the opportunity to lose their virginity a second time. For Morty, it meant opening a can of worms that he would never be able to close.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Morty,” Rick reassured again.

“S-So...” Morty looked down at the ground. “It’s settled?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something a-a little more pressing?” Rick asked.

Morty’s brows drew together. “What?”

“Y-You dislocated your shoulder. D-Don’t tell me you actually forgot.”

Morty looked down at his ruined limb and felt a little embarrassed. In the heat of the moment he had forgotten all about the pain that was tearing its way through his body, screaming for any sort of relief in desperation while Morty completely lost his senses and made more poor decisions for himself.

“I-I guess I did...” he said quietly.

“You have to let me fix it before anything happens, okay? Th-That’s my condition.”

“Should we shake on it?” Morty asked, half-joking.

Rick extended his hand toward Morty’s good arm and locked his fingers around his grandson’s boney wrist, giving his hand one good shake before releasing him.

“It’s a deal.”

“Then I guess it’s time for me to hold up my end of the bargain,” Morty said, swiping the bottle from Rick’s hand and taking a painfully large gulp. “Let’s go push my shoulder back into place.”

“You might want more of that,” Rick offered. “This is probably going to hurt like a bitch.”

Morty took another long swig and pushed the bottle into Rick’s chest, glancing back at him with a coolness that Rick didn’t understand as he opened the door behind him. “Everything in my life hurts like a bitch, Rick. I’ll learn to get used to it.”


End file.
